Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

Hemingway sucks. If I set out to write that way, it would have been been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me.

What charitable 1 percenters can't do is assume responsibility - America's national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead

Here I am, ninety years old and ready for the cooling board, using a brand new Macintosh computer, and there you sit, twenty-two and gorgeous, fresh as a new peach, yet scrawling on a yellow legal pad like an old maid in a Victorian romance.

What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger!" the man in black laughed.

Tracking account planning is rather like counting a mixed batch of tropical fish. You think you see patterns, but they've all changed by the time you've finished counting.